1,721,017 research outputs found

    How to measure temperature and relative humidity. Instruments and instrumental problems

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    Temperature and humidity are responsible, in a direct or indirect way, of a number of deterioration mechanisms, as documented in some chapters of this book. In conserving tangible cultural heritage, the most outstanding effect is the visual appearance of damage or other deterioration products, that may be more or less easily restored, but the key problem is to recognize the causes that have generated the damage and undertake mitigation actions to stop or reduce the deterioration rate. Any object interacts with the surrounding environment, e.g. exchanging heat, moisture, gaseous species and particulate where the micro-environmental conditions can be favourable to the acceleration of chemical reactions or microbiological activity. In any case, microclimate plays a fundamental role and the key physical variables should be measured to know their relevance in the ongoing decay and to control them at levels more convenient for preventive conservation. In other terms, we should have a clear idea of what may be happening and investigate environmental forcing and object response to verify if they fill within the range of sustainability and acceptable preservation

    Archaeometry of air pollution: Urban emission in Italy during the 17th century

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    Past sources of air pollution in the cities of Northern Italy are investigated by a critical analysis of a 17th-century treatise written by B.Ramazzini, a medical doctor interested in the associations between work, environmental pollution and health. In this paper, past emissions due to domestic and craftsman's activity have been recognised and classified according to the potential damage to cultural heritage. The indoor environment experienced concentrations of smoke due to bad ventilation and domestic combustion for lighting and heating. High indoor concentrations of sulphur dioxide were common from the burning of sulphur for domestic and workshop activities. The outdoor environment experienced smoke for the combustion necessary for several workshop activities and uncontrolled dangerous emission. The urban pollution was not homogeneous; the craftsmen's activities were organised in different specific areas so that the environmental deterioration potentials changed form site to site inside the same town

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed

    Variations on the Author

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    “Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship

    Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis

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    We provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis

    Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts

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    We conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more sophisticated methods

    Author Index

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    koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist

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    We have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used

    “A WARNING FROM MARS”. Climate risk assessment in the Museo della Specola

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    Museum microclimate plays a key role in the conservation of scientific instruments on display. Finding appropriate values of temperature and relative humidity to guarantee the entire collections safeguard is a difficult task. Each object responses peculiarly to the environment depending on its composition, conservative history, and adaptations to the environment variability over years. Sometimes, the different materials coexisting in a scientific instrument may develop pathologies not yet fully known. The question becomes even more challenging if one considers that microclimate management is not easy, especially in buildings not originally designed for conservation purposes.The Museo della Specola in Palermo has recently face these critical issues. The museum is in the ancient Observatory, built in 1790, on the top of the 12ndcentury Royal Palace. Although efforts have been made to protect the collection over the years, there is still much to be done. An exhibited object had clearly evidenced that the environmental conditions need to be urgently improved. It is a 19th-century painted wooden globe reproducing the surface of Mars: in less than two years, damages of its pictorial layers occurred at a slow but progressive rate. Conservation measures have been adopted to stop the serious deteriorating processes, but the risk of further deterioration phenomena involving other objects is expected to increase substantially if no actions are taken. This contribution intends to present the results of the preliminary study concerning the thermo-hygrometric records taken in the museum over recent years to control the environmental conditions and assess if the collection is exposed to microclimate risks. Specific actions to improve climate conditions will be proposed
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